Memo #327 What it means for India By Asim Arun – asimup [at] gmail.com The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, Common Man’s Party) landslide victory in the Delhi Assembly polls this month is a rare instance of a civil society movement succeeding in democracy’s ultimate test: elections. The AAP is the child of the “India Against…

Memo #326 By Sara Shneiderman – sara.shneiderman [at] ubc.ca It’s not often that the words “and” and “or” become political slogans, but this has happened in Nepal. A coalition of feminist and rights activists is demanding that the country’s new constitution grant citizenship on the basis of descent through “father or mother,” rather than “father…

Memo #325 By Cesi Cruz – cesi.cruz [at] gmail.com and Benjamin A.T. Graham – benjamin.a.graham [at] usc.edu How can the governments in ASEAN help businesses prepare for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) scheduled to start in 2015? Foreign firms operating in the Philippines are preparing for the changes, but… Continue reading

Efforts to release some 70,000 child soldiers in Myanmar face multiple challenges. Memo #324 By Kai Chen – chenkai [at] zju.edu.cn Since Myanmar’s independence in 1948, the nation’s interest groups—in particular its ethnic minorities and the national military—have been at odds on how to rule Myanmar. The result has been a long simmering armed conflict…

Memo #323 By Dur-e-Aden – dur-e-aden [at] hotmail.com On December 16, 2014, Pakistani Taliban massacred over 132 children when they attacked a high school in Peshawar. They rationalized this attack as a reaction to the violence perpetrated against them (whether by the Pakistani military or US drones). This narrative attempts to shift blame for the…

Myanmar’s Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement has the potential to end decades of conflict, but a political solution will have to wait. Memo #320 By Brandon Miliate – bmiliate [at] gmail.com Today there is the real possibility that Myanmar’s sixty-year history of ethno-national insurgencies might be coming to an end. After decades of stagnation and intermittent fighting,…

Memo #319 By Promod Puri – promodpuri [at] blogspot.com The division of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 generated a persistent hostility between India and Pakistan, a hostility dominated by clashing territorial claims over the Kashmir region. On the international stage the Kashmir problem is largely viewed in diplomatic, political, government and media circles with the understanding that the…

Memo #318 By Mendee Jargalsaikhan – mendee [at] alumni.ubc.ca Last autumn, Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin made separate visits to Mongolia, met for a tri-lateral (Russia-China-Mongolia) summit in the Tajikistan capital of Dushanbe during the leadership summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and dispatched their vice-foreign ministers for a working-level meeting in preparation for next…